But if we take an historical look, despite how well Wal-Mart's value has done between 2011 and 2014, there are ample reasons to forecast a very difficult future. Sailors use small bits of cloth tied to their sails in order to get early readings about the wind. These small bits, called telltales, give early signs that good sailors use to plan their navigation forward. If we look closely at Wal-Mart we can see telltales of problems destined to make the retailing giant's future difficult.

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

1. In March, 2008 Wal-Mart sued a brain damaged employee. The employee was brain damaged by a truck accident. Wal-Mart's insurance paid out $470,000 in health care cost. The employee's family sued the trucking company, at their own expense, and won a $417,000 verdict for lost future wages, pain and suffering and future care needs. Then, Wal-Mart decided it would sue the employee to recover the health care costs it had previously paid. As remarkable as this seems, it is a great little tale. It demonstrates a company so focused on finding ways to cut costs, and so insensitive to its employees and the plight of its customers that it loses all common sense. Not to mention the questionable ethics of this action, it at the very least demonstrates blatant disregard for the P.R. impact of its actions. It shows a company where management feels it is unquestionable, and believe its brand is untouchable .

2. In March, 2010 Ad Age ran a column about Wal-Mart being "stuck in the middle" and effectively becoming the competitive "bull's-eye" of retailing. After years of focusing on its success formula, "dollar store" competition was starting to undermine it on cost and price at the low end, while better merchandise and store experience pressured Wal-Mart from higher end competitors - that often weren't any more expensive. The telltale sign was of a retailer that had focused on beating up its suppliers for years, cutting them out of almost all margin, without thinking about how it might need to change its business model to grow as competitors chopped up its traditional marketplace.

3. In October, 2010 Fortune ran an article profiling then-CEO Mike Duke. It described an executive absolutely obsessive about operational minutia. Banana pricing, underwear inventory, cereal displays - there was no detail too small for the CEO. Another telltale of a company single-mindedly focused on execution, to the point of ignoring market shifts created by changing consumer tastes, improvements at competitors and the rapid growth of on-line retailing. There was no strategic thinking happening at Wal-Mart, as executives believed there would never be a need to change the strategy.

4. In April, 2012 Wal-Mart finds itself mired in a scandal regarding bribing Mexican government officials in its effort to grow sales. Wal-Mart had never been able to convert its success formula into a growing business in any international market, but Mexico was supposedly its breakout. However, we learned the company had been paying bribes to obtain store sites and hold back local competitors. A telltale of a company where pressure to keep defending and extending the old business was so great that very highly placed executives do the unethical, and quite likely the illegal , to make the company look like it is performing better.

5. In July, 2014 a Wal-Mart truck driver hits a car seriously injuring comedian Tracy Morgan and killing his friend. While it could be taken as a single incident, the truth was that the driver had been driving excessive hours and excessive miles, not complying with government mandated rest periods, in order to meet Wal-Mart distribution needs. This telltale showed how the company was stressed all the way down into the heralded distribution environment to push, push, push a bit harder to do more with less in order to find extra margin opportunities. What once was successful was showing stress at the seams, and in this case it led to a fatal accident by an employee.

7. In July, 2015 Amazon's market value exceeds Wal-Mart's. Despite being quite a bit smaller, Amazon's position as the on-line retail leader has investors forecasting tremendous growth. Even though Wal-Mart's value was not declining, its key competition was clearly being forecast to grow much better. The telltale implies that at least some, if not a lot, of Amazon's growth was going to eventually come directly from the world's largest traditional retailer.

8. In January, 2016 we learn that traditional retail store sales declined in the 2015 holiday season from 2014. This was the second consecutive year, and confirmed the previous year's numbers were the start of a trend. Even more damning was the revelation that Black Friday sales had declined in 2013, 2014 and 2015 strongly confirming the trend away from Black Friday store shopping toward Cyber Monday e-commerce. A wicked telltale for the world's largest physical store system.

10. We now know Wal-Mart is in a Growth Stall. A Growth Stall occurs any time a company has two consecutive quarters of lower sales versus the previous year (or two consecutive declining back-to-back quarters.) In the 3rd quarter of 2015 Wal-Mart sales were $117.41 billion vs. same quarter in 2014 $119.00 billion - a decline of $1.6 billion. Last quarter Wal-Mart sales were $129.67 billion vs. year ago same quarter sales of $131.56 billion- a decline of $1.9 billion. While these differences may seem small, and there are plenty of explanations using currency valuations, store changes, etc., the fact remains that this is a telltale of a company that is already in a declining sales trend . And according to The Conference Board companies that hit a Growth Stall only maintain a mere 2% growth rate 7% of the time - the likelihood of having a lower growth rate is 93%. And 95% of stalled companies lose 25% of their market value, while 69% of companies lose over half their value.

Wal-Mart is huge. And its valuation has actually gone up since the Great Recession began. It's valuation also rose from 2011- 2014 as Amazon exploded in size. But the telltale signs are of a company very likely on the way downhill.